Saving the Future – Part 17: Slaves of the Brain Eaters, Thralls of the Blood Drinkers Previously: Scattered across strange interlinked lost worlds, the Lair Legion, their staff, their Mansion, and the SPUD helicarrier and crew struggle to survive, to reunite, and to learn where they have been transported and how to return home. Unexpectedly explorations of the lands have turned up Yo, Nats, and Uhunalura. The heroes’ efforts have been hampered by the attentions of many of the evil powers dominating the thirty-two remaining realms stitched together in the Land That Common Sense Forgot.     But the most potent threat is one they brought with them. Powerful psionic Edward Cromlyn is no longer a prisoner in the Lair Mansion. Instead he has taken control of the telepathic squid-headed Spawn of Umsharr, forged an alliance with the undead of the Eternal Empress, psionically altered Al B. Harper and the Librarian to be evil and to serve him, and has begun to take his revenge upon the heroes that have thwarted him. Al B. Harper has captured the helicarrier and mentally dominated its crew. The Librarian has overcome resistance at the Lair Mansion.     Meanwhile, Champagne and Grace O’Mercy, the Night Nurse, are prisoners of the Eternal Empress and her Children of the Night, and she has a mystery they are required to solve – at the cost of their own existences. Previous Chapters The Hooded Hood's Homepage of Doom Who's Who in the Parodyverse ***     Dancer stood frozen, caught in the mind-control of Edward Cromlyn, the escaped psionic who had once been the Shadow Cabinet’s most trusted hatchet-man. Cromlyn had been there when a generation of superheroes had been shut down or eliminated after World War II. Cromlyn, under the pseudonym of Gramayre, had chaired the committee behind Special Resolution 1066, the Freedom and Patriotism Act that sought to place all metahumans under a behaviour limitation seal. Cromlyn had sent the man who had tortured and murdered Sir Mumphrey Wilton’s daughter and son-in-law. Cromlyn had once mind-controlled Amy Aston to slash her wrists as a minor diversion for his main agenda. Cromlyn had once convinced a young Al B. Harper that he’d had an affair and wrecked his relationship and his future with Miss Framlicker.     Cromlyn had been a helpless prisoner confined in the cells beneath the Lair Mansion; until he like all the other mansion occupants had been transported to this strange patchwork collection of primitive lands and scattered far from others. And now he was free, his powers restored.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Drop the towel,” Cromlyn told Dancer. She obeyed, leaving herself naked and exposed, dripping from the bath he’d interrupted.     Cromlyn had encountered the Spawn of Umsharr, a squid-headed brain-devouring tyrannical psionic gestalt who ruled some of the thirty-two worlds with elitist ruthlessness. His own telepathic gifts had allowed him to seize control of that race’s Master Brain; now their psionic might was added to his, magnifying it a thousand times over. The Spawn were in the Mansion now, hungry for their meal.     Dancer tried to resist him, but his will was overwhelming. Her tormentor even seemed amused by her mental struggles.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Now take up that razor,” Cromlyn told Dancer, a small humourless smile on his face. “Before we go any further, take up that razor and carve up your face.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So you’re a vampire.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m a nurse. I just happen to be a little bit undead as well, that’s all.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s got to be a somewhat weird.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I used to think so. Then I compared myself to other things I encountered.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So you… save people in the hospital then suck their blood when they’re discharged?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I don’t prey on humans, Champagne. I have been known to raid the blood bank in ER. I have an arrangement with the management.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But apart from being a nurse, you are a vampire, Grace. And one powerful enough to destroy that vampire prince that was sent to track you down.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I guess. A while back I kind of consumed the ichor of an ancient and very powerful vamp called Nosferos, the one that did all that damage in Paradopolis with the Hellraisers. It kind of… boosted me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You think you could maybe drink these other major vampires they’ve got guarding us?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No. Well maybe I could, I don’t know about that. But if I took their blood… I could hardly hold onto myself last time. You don’t know what it’s like. It’s an addiction, like those poor junkies in the Emergency Room. I want it so badly. I want to taste them. I want to taste you. I’m holding on. Barely. Always just holding on.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay, so you taking their blood would be a bad idea. Taking mine would be a worse idea. Honestly.”          Ã¢â‚¬Å“I think that Eternal Empress knows what I can do. I think she’s assigned these old powerful undead to guard us with that in mind. I don’t think my powers will help us escape.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So we go along with what they want for now. We examine this tower of light they want checking out. We investigate this ancient who created these realms. We try to figure why the lands keeps decaying away, one at a time, and what these Grey Walkers are that appear to consume them. We assemble the clues and we try to solve the puzzles.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I guess so. And then we need to find a way to destroy the vampires and free all the people they’re holding like cattle for farming purposes. That’s what I set out to do, Champagne.”     The two women were trekking through the mists high on the side of the prominent volcano that dominated so much of the landscape. It was bitterly cold this high up, and the low cloud obscured the waning moon. Prince Goreslash pushed them forward roughly. “You shall never cross us again, blood traitor,” he promised the Night Nurse. “You are necessary to get the mortal inside the tower, but no vampire can endure its light. You shall be destroyed.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Well that’s not much of an incentive,” Champagne pointed out. “I think we need a little bit more data about this place where…”     She stopped short. The travellers had crested the ridge and the mists cleared to reveal the tower of light that they had trekked to find. Grace and Champagne exchanged glances.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Oh my,” the Night Nurse said. “Now that is a complication.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay,” Yo told the shocked people who’d just witnessed her put down the emissary of the Spawn of Umsharr, “we are to be having of a problem.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yes,” agreed Navali, who handled the day-to-day administration of the city of Golgamoria on behalf of the Wise One. “Is it maybe that you’ve just declared war on the alliance of vampires and brain-eaters that is powerful enough to wipe the Free City off the map?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That too,” the pure thought being agreed. “But Yo is to be seeing into brain of uncute-emissary and is to be knowing now of who is to be being new uncute-Master Brain. And Yo is to be knowing of what new uncute-Master Brain is to be doing. And Yo is must now to be stopping of him.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The Master Brain of the squid-heads?” young serious Ophelo worried. “There’s now way we could hold out against then Spawn of Umsharr if they turn their combined psionic might against us.”     Yo glanced back towards Magweeed and gave her a reassuring smile. “Yo is to be thinking that maybe there is.” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Glory. Glory, wake up!”     The border collie twitched a little and struggled uncertainly to her feet.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t move away from my hand,” Griffin told her. “I’m not good at making other things untouchable yet. I can usually only do my clothes. I wouldn’t want to just intangiblise half of you.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That would be bad,” Glory woofed. She communicated with humans through a pattern of sounds and movements and Griffin was becoming quite adept at understanding them. The boy had experience of intelligent nonhumans. “What happened to me?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not sure,” Visionary’s son told her. “Everybody was working to get the helicarrier in the air and then everybody fell over. Then they all got up again and started walking around as if they’d been enchanted.”     Glory couldn’t feel the vibration under her intangible feet but her other senses warned her that the massive SPUD helicarrier was now in the air. “There was a psionic assault,” the mutt of might considered. “A powerful one, to get past the training Dominic gave me.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Mind magic, like I said,” shrugged Griffin. “That’s why you need to stay intangible with me. While we’re like this the bad thoughts can’t touch us.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You can be invisible to psionic assaults?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I learned how to hide from Auntie. But now I don’t know what to do.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You did very well to wake me up, Griffin. But we must ascertain the reason for the mental domination of this vessel’s crew and seek a way of ending it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’s what I thought. And that’s why I looked specially for you, Glory.”     The pooch of power realised that the boy had something in mind. “What is it?” she asked.     Griffin leaned forward conspiratorially. “Do you know how to fix androids?”     The helicarrier wheeled away to the west, towards the ruins of Umarr, where there were refugees to eradicate. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What are you doing?” Flapjack demanded of Amber St Clare as she shattered the mechanisms that could initiate the anti-psionic defences of the mansion. “What are we all doing? Why can’t I move?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“It’s psionic control,” answered Garrick with a sick horror. Like Amber, he had been dominated by one of the Parody Master’s obedience brands and dome things that appalled him. Now the nightmare was back.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can’t stop it,” Amber said, tears streaming down her face as her hands deactivated the remaining security of the Lair Mansion to allow free entry to the brain-eating cephalopods that were gliding through the corridors towards them. “Please… kill me now!”     The Spawn of Umsharr came nearer, happy to oblige. ***     Hallie was in a nightmare of her own. The artificial intelligence’s memory had been corrupted during the Lair Mansion’s transit to the forest realm of Truvelo. She remembered nothing beyond the first year of her creation, the period that included her service to Baron Zemo and her defection to the mainframe of the Lair Legion. A supposed attempt by the Librarian to reboot her hard drives had fooled her into jumping into a remote Holographic Emitter Device to hold her consciousness while her main systems were reset. Now she was trapped and held immobile by an over-ride system that even her fully-aware self hadn’t known Al B. Harper had placed in the devices.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Lee!” she called out desperately as the Librarian prepared to erase the data in the main hard drives, removing her memories forever, “please, whatever it is that’s possessing you, fight it!”     The Librarian of the Moon Public Library looked round. “Fight it?” he sneered. He stepped over Visionary’s data-overloaded body and came close to the A.I. “Do you know how liberating it is to be freed of all those restraining moral chains? To be able to cast aside conscience and duty and maudlin concern for others and to truly revel in self?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I can see the attractions, yes. I served Heinrich Zemo, after all. But I chose a better way.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You think that now,” Lee admitted. “But once I’ve adjusted your programming you’ll see things my way. In fact you’ll see things so my way that you’ll be my obedient and willing slave entity. And then all your power and potential will be harnessed for me.”     A cold horror tried to overwhelm Hallie’s mind. “That would be… worse than murder,” she gasped. “Please, Lee… what did they do to you?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Psionic surgery,” the Librarian replied coldly, returning to his work. He did activate the viewing screens so Hallie could see the Spawn of Umshaar moving through the mansion. He set the monitor of Dancer and Cromlyn to record.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Vizh, Vizh! Wake up!” Hallie pleaded, calling to the fallen possibly-fake man. She’d been betrayed by the Lair Legion, captured ready for lobotomisation and enslavement by one of the few people who could make good his threat. Bookman was moments away from destroying her forever. She needed a friend. “Visionary!”     Vizh twitched once in his brain-overloaded nightmares and rolled over.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Visionary!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Any last words before I turn out the lights?” Lee Bookman asked her. He seemed to enjoy the reflex subroutines that simulated tears rolling down her face. He decided to keep those.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Lee… I’m begging you…!”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Excellent.” The Librarian turned back to the panel and laid his hand on it to overwrite the data. “Hold that thought.” His other hand reached through Hallie’s insubstantial hologram and grasped the tiny metal egg of the HED.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hold, fiend!” came a loud roar from the doorway. “Release the damsel and face me, necromancer!”     The Librarian turned round in irritation at the interruption. “Now what?” he snapped.     When the Mansion security systems had been disconnected then Thungore the Mighty had escaped from the holding cells. He had no idea what was going on but that didn’t usually stop him.     He went to default, swung his black whispering runesword, and sliced off the Librarian’s head. *** [This section features material from Jason]     Anna’s Abstract Neural Network brain sensed that its mechanical support systems were no longer responding. Its body control center reverted to Autonomous Mode, sending a reset code and dispatching the entire complement of micro-machines for repairs.     The micro-machines reported back four seconds later that there was no damage, and the Inhibitor Soft Switch had been activated. If Anna had been conscious, she would have known it was forbidden to deactivate that switch. The micro-machines had different priorities - restore operation at any cost, with no restrictions.     Her eyes flipped open suddenly, and conscious thought began flooding her mind. Questions, worries, fears.     The first one was: where was Griffin?     She lifted her deep blue hair covered head, and turned her shining deep blue eyes toward an unconscious figure nearby. She crawled over to the technician and peeled back his eyelids. His eyes were rolled straight up into his head, and as she moved him blood trickled from his nose. She examined his head, and found no sign of injury. That meant some sort of psionic attack.     Anna turned the gain on her hearing to maximum and switched to radio motion detection, so she could scan through a few layers of walls like radar. There was no sound, no joyful chatting at their victory over having regained control of the Helicarrier...     ...and then her last known memories flashed back to her. As with a human, fragmented memories at the moment of an assault often didn’t reassemble right away, but returned later. She remembered Al B Harper pressing the now disabled soft switch - he was now an enemy. Good thing that she gave him incomplete schematics, she thought, guarding her biggest secrets closely. She remembered the presence of hostile psychic life forms on this planet, or plane, or whatever it was.     She was in an annex off the SPUD helicarrier command deck. Her schematics labelled it as Deck C room 1322 Port: Auxiliary Communications Node. She quickly scanned the local video monitor and replayed it to the point where the technician had fallen down. Griffin was there too, guarding her fallen form, and he’d tumbled over at the same moment. But as Griffin lost consciousness he’d naturally reverted to intangibility and invisibility, vanishing off the monitors.     At that point, she hadn’t quite solved what happened yet, but she had enough information to prompt her to become silent and stealthy. If she were a standard military robot it would be called Hostile Mode or Defensive Mode. For Anna it simply was survival instinct.     Unlike her robotic roots, however, Anna’s survival instinct was much more dynamic. She valued her own life, and was unaware of what kind of weapons the hostiles who took Griffin’s consciousness had - she valued his life too, in case they might come back for him. Even with her advanced weaponry it would be unwise to fight just yet.     Anna pulled free one of the service air vents as silently as she could. She would have liked to obtain an accurate map of the ship, but speaking to the computer could be dangerous if Al B was monitoring it. It was best if he thought she was still down. Luckily, SPUD Helicarriers were similar to each other in construction, and she knew how the others were built.     Anna flashed the local video feed forward and spotted Griffin again. Ten minutes after he’d vanished he reappeared again, scared but no panicking. He’d tried shouting to wake Anna but he couldn’t become solid to shake her. After five frantic minutes he’d given up and walked away through a bulkhead wall.     Even the full extent of Anna’s senses couldn’t track him after that. But one person cared about me, Anna thought.     She slid back the ventilation cover into the air duct, neutralising the defensive countermeasures then carefully re-seating the air vent cover so it would appear not to be tampered with.     She crawled away through the duct to plan her next moves. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Don’t take this personally,” Hatman told Nats. “It’s just that we need to be certain that you’re who you say you are. We’ve already had a Hero Feeder impersonating me and perhaps Liu Xi and one murdering archaeologists at this site. Maybe the same one.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And you want to check out that it’s really me and Uhuna rather than cunning robot doubles or something,” Bill Reed understood. “I get that.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hold on then,” Jay Boaz told him. “I need my Sherlock Holmes deerstalker out of my hatility belt, but it’s tough to get in there in this place. I need a minute.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But if you’re you then it’s great to have you back, Natster,” CSFB! told him. “You’ve got a lot of catching up to do. You’ve missed a lot of stuff. Mostly bad.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, I heard about the end of the Parody War,” Nats breathed.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Nah, I mean really bad. I haven’t told you about Civil War yet, or One More Day. In fact you’ve probably not even heard about the Goblin/Stacy kids, right?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“No doubt you’re the same CSFB!” grinned Nats. “Okay, so I’ve missed maybe a year or so since I vanished from hell and it was a pretty tough one for you guys. Sorry about that. Well, as sorry as I can be given I was& waiting with Uhuna.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Waiting like rabbits, I heard,” Dream noted.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Speech patterns, appearance, intellect, and knowledge base all appear to be as expected,” Hatman noted with pronounced English tones, leaning back in his deerstalker and cradling his fingers. “Flight jacket is stained by some rather esoteric particles, suggesting it at least is the genuine article and has indeed been worn to rather a lot of unusual dimensions. But given that we have already factored Space Fandoms into our scenario this isn’t sufficient to draw a definite conclusion, my dear Foxglove.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’m still trying to work out where we are right now,” Bill Reed admitted. “At first I thought Savage Park, but tech’s working here and I don’t recognise the mountains. Then I wondered about time travel, but the stars are all the wrong patterns and the sun and moon seem different.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yeah, we’re working on that one ourselves,” CSFB! noted. “Alongside trying to keep all these people together and alive.” His face grew more serious. “We lost a couple to the vamps.”     Hatman pulled on an old spotted silk scarf over his brow. “Cross my palm with silver,” instructed Gypsy Rose Boaz. “Now let’s see. You seem to have the same destiny as Bill Reed, my dearie-o. There’s that strange sour bit where the Psychostave bit you - and a whiff of old brimstone.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“This place doesn’t have any showers,” Bill objected. “There’s a waterfall but there was this, um, well proportioned rubber girl there. Stretching.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“That’d be Silicone Sally,” CrazySugarFreakBoy! explained. “She’s very flexible. You should see her Hustler spread. So to speak.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You really shouldn’t,” Jay shuddered. “Not if Uhuna can still transfer injuries.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Hey, Sally’s trying to fit in,” CSFB! protested. “And I don’t mean in her Hustler spread way.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“But she served Baroness Zemo, right?” Nats reminded them. “So this could just be another penetrate-the-LL scam. Haven’t we had enough of them?” He saw the sudden grin on Hatman’s face. “What?”     Jay Boaz clapped him on the shoulder. “Bill, you have no idea how happy I am to hear you choose the word ‘we’. Welcome back!” ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“So does licking the stones help?” asked Silicone Sally dubiously.     The Magna Shoggoth carefully packed his tongue back into his mouth. “It should,” he answered, “but this body seems very limited in its sensory inputs. If I could only flow through these artefacts I could determine their status so much quicker.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Human,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton scowled, staring down at the scrawny odd-looking scarecrow in the travel-worn black suit. “The Shoggoth is human now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Totally,” sighed Samantha Featherstone, who’d had to explain toilet procedures to him. “Except for that weird perspective he has.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“He seems to have abstracted a typical DNA sequence and converted himself a body,” Princess Uhunalura of the Abhumans explained. Her biogenetic gift was to understand the health of others and to transfer injuries from one person to another. She’d already examined the former Shoggoth. “I don’t understand how he could do that in transit between dimensions without needing Abhuman Mists or any kind of medium.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Perhaps if I ate the stones?” the Shoggoth speculated.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sure, why not?” shrugged Sally. “Go for it.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Maybe later,” Sam intervened quickly. “Just tell us what you’ve got so far.”     The Shoggoth was examining the ruined pre-Incan Peruvian city that had been shifted from Earth a few days before the Lair Mansion had. Sir Mumphrey’s Chronometer of Infinity had detected certain carved black stones which predated the formation of the Earth by several billion years.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“These stones are techno-organic, of course,” the Shoggoth reported. “That minty flavour? With a hint of absinthe and toothpaste?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I’ll take your word for it,” Sally assured him. “I reserve my licking for my social life.”     Princess Uhuna perked up. “Really? What do you think about…?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Minors present,” rumbled Sir Mumphrey, with a hand on his grand-daughter’s shoulder. Sam added that conversation to the list of things she needed to research when her grandfather wasn’t around.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The taste is rather remote though,” the Shoggoth continued reflectively. “Faded, and not just because the transfer energies have finally been discharged.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Something must have triggered the discharge,” Sam mused, deciding to go through Champagne’s interview notes with the shanghaied archaeologists again.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“There’s some deuced weird things turning up,” Mumphrey reflected. “I’ve never been anywhere before that my pocketwatch can’t draw a chronal recharge from. How did young Nats and Uhuna come to be here centuries before us trapped in that crystal thingie? What was that sense of evaluation all of us had before we appeared scattered here? What’s the meaning of these doubles that have been poppin’ up causin’ trouble? Who made those ancient stitch-gates, and what for? Why are there less realms now than there used to be, according to the locals? Where in creation have we actually turned up?”     The Shoggoth looked up. “Oh, that’s a simple one,” he sniffed. “I thought you wanted some complex information about these interstitial transfer nodes.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Wait a minute!” objected Silicone Sally. “You know where we are? You just didn’t think it was important enough to mention?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Please tell us,” Uhuna asked the Shoggoth. “We’d like to know.”     So the Shoggoth told them.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Damn and blas…” began Sir Mumphrey. Then he glanced aside at Samantha. “Drat and bother,” he concluded. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Just so you know,” Edward Cromlyn advised Dancer as she picked up the cut-throat razor with trembling, disobedient hands, “your friends have taken their first casualty. It’s a shame, because Marie Murcheson would have been an interesting slave, given her background. But Bookman has a core of savagery and cruelty that I’d never have suspected before altering his psyche.”     Dancer unfolded the razor so she could start to carve patterns across her cheeks.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Now you’re thinking, desperately hoping actually, that when Marie dies she might revert back to that terrible Celestian-empowered banshee she once was. After all, she’s once again died in silence, in the Mansion she haunted all those lonely years. But you’re overlooking the wider situation. The Mansion is displaced, in a realm where the Celestian’s power does not extend. Marie won’t be saved and empowered because that which saved and empowered her before is not able to reach her here. Marie merely died. The end.”     Dancer’s hand lifted the razor to brush against her lips. Tears trickled down her cheeks but she still couldn’t command her own flesh.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“And now you’re struggling with the horror of what you’re about to do to yourself, and yearning for your friends to rescue you. At this very moment, however, Al B. Harper has taken control of the SPUD helicarrier for me and is flying it to locate and destroy the refugees that Hatman has gathered together. When the heroes assault the carrier they’ll also fly into the Spawn’s mind-control field and join my unhappy crew.” Cromlyn’s face grew harder. “And then the punishments proper will begin. All the indignities I have faced these last months at the Legion’s hands will be repaid a thousand times over. Wilton can watch as his grand-daughter…”     The former Shadow Cabinet agent caught himself. “But here I am, declaiming to you, Dancer, when you’re the most important show right now. So go on, do something to yourself that can never, ever be put right.”     Dancer tried to resist. She tried so hard. But she couldn’t.     And then she vanished.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“What?” demanded Cromlyn. He could no longer feel her mind. “How?” ***     The Spawn of Umshaar glided into the Operations Room, their extendible tentacles twitching with anticipation at the feasts ahead of them. Flapjack, Garrick, and Amber stood to attention awaiting their pleasure.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Okay, so you things are going to eat my brain,” Flapjack defied them, “but I don’t really use it anyhow!” His words came out as hollow bravado.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Why isn’t someone rescuing us?” whispered Amber. “They always rescue us.” Except she’d seen too many people close to the Legion die at the hands of their enemies to believe that any more.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I always knew that Legion would be the death of me,” Garrick snarled bitterly.     The Spawn surrounded their victims and reached out with skull-boring tentacles to begin their psionic and actual feasting.     Flapjack, Garrick, and Amber vanished from their midst. ***     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Where am I?” gasped Dancer as the world around her blurred into a different place. Her hand was still beside her face, but it carried no cruel blade.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Welcome to your Happy Place,” Yo told Sarah Shepherdson. “Yo is to be thinking of was where you needed to be going of just now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Yo?”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“To be putting on of leotard, cute-Dancer,” the pure thought being advised. S/he gestured for Magweed to hand over the costume. “Is to be semi-cute Flapjack and others are to be here soon and is best to be having of clothes, yes?” ***     The zombie slaves with Prince Goreslash’s party erected the heavy black tents over the coffins of their masters as the pitch black night eased into dawning grey. There was no provision made for Grace O’Mercy.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You will go up to the tower of light with the mortal,” Goreslash explained to the Night Nurse. “It is the only shelter for you now from the sun’s coming rays. You will keep her alive because she in turn is your only hope of existence.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I thought vampires were also destroyed by the light of the tower,” Champagne argued. “Although there doesn’t seem to be a light there now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The light is… intermittent,” Goreslash admitted. “But it comes when an undead approaches.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“I could just go on my own,” Champagne noted. “You did that gross thing where you pricked my neck and put your blood on it so I have to do what you command. It’s not like I have the choice of running away right now.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You have to obey him until he’s destroyed,” Grace clarified.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You will need the blood traitor,” Goreslash told the international jewel thief. “There are many dangers around the tower, possibly within it. Creatures of old night that even we undead must be cautious of. Creatures of madness from an elder time. Predators from other worlds, other realities.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Lovely,” breathed Champagne.     Grace could feel the morning approaching. “We’d better get on then,” she suggested nervously.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“We’ll take a preliminary survey,” agreed Champagne. “I’ll leave that box of special equipment I prepared here with Lord Goreslash for now.” She pointed a commanding finger at the prince of the dead. “Do not look inside. I went to a lot of trouble assembling that research equipment and I don’t want you people messing with it. Just leave it alone. Do not touch.”     With that the two women left the gothic tents and began the hard climb up to the highest summit, the volcano’s peak where the tower of light perched. It was rough going.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You do know that those vampires will be rummaging through whatever you assembled from the equipment you had them fetch then hid in that box right now, don’t you?” the Night Nurse warned.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Not yet they haven’t,” Champagne replied. There was a loud explosion and the tent behind them burst into a ball of fire. “Now they have,” she added with satisfaction. She felt the strange compulsion on her snap like a rubber band.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“You’re free?” Grace recognised, peering in fascinated horror at the blazing zombies staggering about down the slope.     Ã¢â‚¬Å“Sure. So if you want to fly away and try to find safety before sunrise you can do. I’m heading towards the mystery.”     Ã¢â‚¬Å“The mystery for me too,” Grace promised. She looked up at the structure ahead of them. “I want to know how Visionary’s lighthouse got here as well,” she said. *** Continued Tomorrow: What is the terrible secret of the Tower of Light, and did Vizh leave the gas on? Can one boy and his dog and an anxious android defeat the sinister genius or Dr Al B. Harper? Will Silicone Sally’s new resolution survive ten minutes conversation with Killer Shrike? Where have our heroes really been trapped after all? And can Visionary, Hallie, a hairy barbarian and his sidelick, and parts of the Librarian survive the revenge and malice of Edward Cromlyn? More random scenes as we claw out way towards some kind of resolution in Now Get Out Of That. *** Previous Chapters: #1: “And just when did Danny find time to take over the Parodyverse?” by Dancer #2: "Sometime you have to turn flammable again!" by Visionary #3: That’s the Way the Story Goes by the Hooded Hood #4: See No Evil by the Hooded Hood #5: Whodunnit by the Hooded Hood, Visionary, Killer Shrike, and Jason #6: Suspicious Behaviour by the Hooded Hood, Jason, Hatman, and CrazySugarFreakBoy! #7: Accusation and Denial by the Hooded Hood, JJJ, Jason and L! #8: The Final Solution by the Hooded Hood and Dancer #9: The Land That Common Sense Forgot by the Hooded Hood #9.1: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #9.2: Chad and Ronnie by L! #9.3: “In addition to cappuccino and personal hygiene these tribespeople have not yet invented underwear.” by Dancer #9.4: Lone Lost Boy & Heroines Hanging Together by CrazySugarFreakBoy! #9.5: From Dross into Gold by Killer Shrike #9.6: Old Friends and New Allies by Visionary #9.7: Taking a Swim by L! #9.8: A Post-Swim Chat by L! #9.9: Champagne and the Land That Common Sense Forgot by Champagne #10: The Age of Villains by the Hooded Hood #10.1: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #10.2: The Baroness #55 by JJJ #10.3: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #10.4: Ewe Gotta Have Hart 1 by Killer Shrike #10.5: Ewe Gotta Have Hart 2 by Killer Shrike #11: An Age Undreamed Of by the Hooded Hood #12: The New Lair Legions (And Other Heroes) by the Hooded Hood #12.1: I Hate You by Visionary #12.2: Champagne and the Tower of Laments by Champagne #12.3: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #12.4: The Hearing by Visionary #12.5: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #13: Exploring the Forbidden Valley, or Samantha Featherstone and the Crystal Goddess by the Hooded Hood #14: Real Heroes by the Hooded Hood #14.1: “I’d like to be clear that I’m a no-skewer zone, and have been since college.” by Dancer #14.2: Catherine & the Danger Zone by L! #14.3: “Do you know how much shaving I had to do to put this thing on?” by Visionary #14.4: “Well we can’t just wait here till we find a use for Visionary. We’ll starve to death.” by Dancer #15: Change and Decay by the Hooded Hood #15.1: Adventures in Parodyverse by Jason #15.2: Hazardous Chemicals by Killer Shrike #16: One Moment In time by the Hooded Hood *** Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2008 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2008 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.

On the plus side, it was good that a sizeable number of the cast managed to be out when the Brain Eaters came by for tea.


Lots of chills and narrow escapes this time out, along with some teases of answers. The evacuation to the Happy Place was a timely escape, and I'm glad that nothing super-mean happened to Dancer or Amber or Flapjack (although I imagine that Flapjack would have found it happier if no leotards had been waiting...) I'm concerned about the fate of Marie, but I'm relatively confident that things aren't nearly as cut and dried as Cromlyn would like to believe.

Speaking of cut, I'm wondering how things work when you decapitate a Space Fandom. It seems like perhaps we'll find out next time, judging by the blurb.

I was a bit surprised to see Griffin add the ability to make other people and/or things intangible, but I believe I can work with that, especially in the context of this story. It's an odd team trying to save the carrier, but then that seems to be a recurring theme of this story, and a large part of what makes it so fun.

Looking forward to finding out the answers to where we are (delivered with some really fun character interaction, I thought) and what's up with Vizh's lighthouse...

Someone else might mention at some point, or it might just be me, but at the beginning of Anna's scene it's difficult to tell if Griffin is there or not at first. Not really a big deal, but if you say something about it here then people will read my reply thread and not need to repeat it again.

And of course now I need to know if Anna is parked in the ducts of the helicarrier until I do some kind of tie in or if you're dealing with that part. She's going to really put her mechanical abstract brain to the test on this one, which is what I was hoping for. It's unacceptable to bring down the helicarrier and crash it, and it's also unacceptable to kill everyone and take control of it. She'll have to really be creative, like Yuki told her to do.

It brought a smile to my face that it seems Yo is doing the same thing Faite did during the Moderator saga. Faite would probably be amused too.

I'll need to look at that sometime and see if I can't make the text alterations clearer. The whole of this chapter suffered from having to be recovered line by line from a dozen or more different cached versions after a computer crash scrambled the Word file, and from me deciding the split the chapter into three chapters for the sake of readers' sanity.


There's still all the rest of the material you sent me to use. It's all worked in, but with me splitting the story up into three daily chapters it's not all included in this first episode.

By the end of the three parts the helicarrier situation will be resolved and we can all move on to new crises.


Yo is slightly more contrained, in that people can only exit the Happy Place at the exact spot they entered it.

Rude of them not to lay on a buffet though.


Noted.

Dancer wasn't even meant to be at the mansion in my original draft, so I had to rewrite things so she'd have some useful part to play. And as always, once she was there she stole the scene.


We shall.


I was making the assumption that normally Griffin can take his clothes with him these days when he goes intangible. I suppose they could be made of improbable molecules. However, if you'd prefer that he can't make others intangible and invisible on a regular basis there's a good case to make that special rules apply where he is just now.


And where Vizh's stuff has gone.

I would have taken all 3 at once. Sanity is overrated.



Noted (fortunately I was working on the board software and didn't have time to start any tie-ins yet).



That means the concept is still the same, though - hold on to more fragile people in trouble until someone less fragile comes along and cleans up the mess.

Of course Faite did it because she has a purpose in mind, not because she was trying to be friendly. Her point was that if all memory of the non-Moderator universe was erased, what was before could never be returned. She was preserving the memory through the small group she was looking after.

The third section isn't completed so it would have delayed things, and I felt that after the chapter had reached triple-size-standard-UT it was better to give people less of a narrative-dump.

> > > It brought a smile to my face that it seems Yo is doing the same thing Faite did during the Moderator saga. Faite would probably be amused too. > > Yo is slightly more contsrained, in that people can only exit the Happy Place at the exact spot they entered it. > That means the concept is still the same, though - hold on to more fragile people in trouble until someone less fragile comes along and cleans up the mess. > Of course Faite did it because she has a purpose in mind, not because she was trying to be friendly. Her point was that if all memory of the non-Moderator universe was erased, what was before could never be returned. She was preserving the memory through the small group she was looking after.

Yo has purposes in mind too. S/he'd like to see her friends and one of them needs fixing.

>

In accordance with your preference, the Lee in this chapter isn't actually Lee at all. Lee's off meeting Liu Xi in the last chapter (which is now rewritten). The Lee in this chapter is the shape-stealing, power-duplicating Space Fandom, who has been programmed to BELIEVE he is Lee, and who has subsequently been brainwashed by Cromlyn who also believes him to be Lee.

The stuff with Lee was only half the confusion, the other was I didn't read any mention to Chad or Ronnie! What's happened to them?

They're both mentioned in the next portion and one of them gets to do something important!

The thing is, what is now going to appear as #17-19 were originally all going to be one chapter before it got too long. The whole Land That... cast would have appeared in that story. Now it's broken up some of the cast, such as Killer Shrike and Chad and Ronnie don't appear in the first section, and some other cast don't get much space later on.

Anyway, I hope to post the next chapter within the next fifteen minutes.

They don't to do that all that often. Well, they do "important" things all the time, at least that's what they think it is. But what other think it is is questionable.


ok.


That quick? Wow!

> > They're both mentioned in the next portion and one of them gets to do something important!

I worked on the theory that if anyone is going to be immune to psionic squid-heads it's Chad and Ronnie.

> > Anyway, I hope to post the next chapter within the next fifteen minutes. > That quick? Wow!

Done now. Stop the countdown!

Maybe. That reminds of that episode of "Futurama" where the planet Earth was taken over by floating space Brains & made everyone mentally deficient, except for Fry who was immune to their powers since he already was. He then used his stupidness to defeat the Brains!


Read & replied!

I've only ever seen a few episodes of Futurama but I've enjoyed them. Are they still making it? I heard it had been cancelled.

> > > > Anyway, I hope to post the next chapter within the next fifteen minutes. > > > That quick? Wow! > > Done now. Stop the countdown! > Read & replied!

Noted.

That's different.



Hopefully you don't mean Flapjack.

Lots of people believe that Flapjack should be taken to be fixed.